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Crew: A Futuristic Detective Game

Crew is a futuristic re-imagining of CLUE, where you try to discover who killed the captain of your spaceship, where, and with what. The game-play includes narrowing down suspects with information and writing down info on loose pieces of paper. Not only can you solve who killed the captain of your ship, but you also get judged and graded on how well you've done and how few clues you took.

Tutorial:
Clicking on people will give you a hint about the crew or that crew member. Here are some tips that will help you narrow down suspects:

- Crew members never lie. You can take anything they say at face value.

- If a Crew member tells you someone was in a certain room during the captain's death. That room is not the murder room, nor is the person referred to the murderer.

-If a person suggests another crewmate was angry, or upset. They likely killed the Captain.

-The murderer won't tell you what room they were in when the murder occurred.

Investigating rooms will tell you the murder room and the murder weapon. There are only 4 possible murder weapons. If you find three of the weapons, the missing one is the murder weapon. Try not to investigate too many rooms. You can narrow down the room that the Captain is murdered in through dialogue, but currently the only way to find murder weapons is to guess at rooms. Don't investigate more rooms than you need to. The room with the blood drop in it, found while investigating, is the murder room.

If you were right, you will be treated to a win-screen and your score/rating. If you were wrong, you can play again.

Currently there is a problem in that the dialogue inter-laps making it difficult or impossible to narrow it down to one killer. As of right now, your best mode option is to guess based on the clues you are given. I am working on this, but am afraid I won't finish it by the time the compo is over as it includes spreadsheets and cross-matching dialogue, which is a pain and time-consuming.

Agree with people above, there are often cross-referencing of the same fact by different people. This could be better if it has a good in-game introduction/tutorial and music to set the mood. Overall, I like the gameplay and art style. Good job!

As I mentioned in the game post, the repeated dialogue is the one thing I didn't get a chance to fix before submitting. A tutorial with back-story is also something that is really needed if I were to take it further. As my first Ludum Dare game, I learned a lot here, and I'm glad you like the game-play and art style. I appreciate that you took the time to play it.

Incredible art and a good game concept. Sorry you couldn't work out the game logic of identifying the killer in time. Maybe you could have set a rule stating that the killer is always one room away from the scene of the crime, and thus limit the choices that a player could make?

There were a lot of counter-intuitive things about the game and I had to rely on the description to figure out most of it. Once I read through, it seemed pretty easy though. The art and the mood were really good!

Thanks Nick! Until a tutorial is added it's a game that takes some effort to learn. That's not the most optimal for a game-jam game, I've learned, and I will try to make a simpler to play game next time around. I'm really glad you liked the art and mood!

This is a damn solid entry. Awesome looking sprite art and audio/ambience. Only negative thing I think to say is that it could be a bit deeper. If was more meaningful than just straight up "here's a fact", and you could maybe derive more information if you really thought about what people were saying.

Once I actually read the description, the game made a lot more sense and I figured out who the killer was! Yes, it does need work so that it becomes possible to logically and surely identify the killer based on all the clues, but that is not the point - the concept is great! Logic aside, graphics and sound were wonderful. Love this entry, well done!

Amazing ! Without a tutorial you have to rely on your description but overall it is a very solid and innovative concept you got there. I would love to play an extended version of this game if you think about updating it in the future.

Lovely visual style. The background music fits very well. Was fun to play, but I needed always so many rooms to uncover the items, which somehow makes the score worse :D
It would be nice, if you could see the murderer, the item and the room after accusing someone wrongly.

But, though I really liked the concept, I didn't like the gameplay that much... :(
I couldn't help but compare it to the based game, and I missed being better able to track down who the killer is. Perhaps if each one had a unique line (like, being able to know about almost every one and every room). As of now, it's possible to know about only two people, at times...

The game looks nice and complete, but it felt unbalanced.
Do you need to guess everything to win? Or is guessing the killer enough? It doesn't seem like that, and it's kinda illogical.
So, I suppose you need to guess the weapon and the room. There is a quite high chance that you'll have to investigate almost all rooms. And there is a quite high chance that you won't be able to find the killer for sure. It's a matter of luck if you'll find a killer or not. I would like it to be more logic-related.
Also, I'd like a hint when you hover over portraits in the lower-left corner or rooms after you investigated them.

I got "Brandy was definitely in the eatery" and "Brandy was in the study at the time..." during the same play.

@Madball Uh oh, some dialogue is wack then. I was going to have a seperate type of investigation that led to clues that helped you solve the murder weapon and room in a more logical instead of random way. Just ran out of time for the competition. Next time, I think I'll just shoot for the jam, as you just get more polish, which means better feedback, and better coverage. Seems like a no brainer.

I liked the game much, but either the score you get is highly random (and depends mostly on random order in which you click people and places) or I didn't get how to play this game efficiently, and not by clicking on every thing available.

Really good game, I like it very much. Dialogues could be longer and with some choices. Sadly it's a bit easy at the moment, with a few clicks is the murder solved, but maybe it was pure luck. I think it's definitely worth to work further on your game.

The art is great, definitely pulled me through a few extra playthroughs. I think many of the pieces were executed well, but the game logic was a little confusing where it seemed there was no way to totally get the correct answer without guess, which makes a pass/fail style of rating frustrating. The scoring confused me, because it would be nice to get a better score for guessing correctly after checking fewer clues, but the score didn't seem to work that way; so there was no incentive not to check every room, and hence no point to the score. A little more consistency to the main objective of the game would make it a lot more fun for repeat plays, but still a very nice job!

Really a neat take on a classic gameplay concept. As others have said the interplay of the dialogue could be refined, but this is a great base for a more intricate game! It would work well on a phone or tablet too.

What a lousy detective I am... As everyone else said, solid entry!
Sometimes the Crew members refer to themselves with their name which is a bit weird. Like the smooth BG music, fits very good to the investigation feeling

I love the graphics and the idea. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find the murder just once.

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